New downtown Dallas coffee shop pairs cappuccinos with baby cakes

New downtown Dallas coffee shop pairs cappuccinos with baby cakes

A new coffee shop with exquisite little cakes is opening in downtown Dallas in a vital, centrally located space. Called Cakettes TX, it will open very softly on January 27 at 400 N. St. Paul St., where the ill-fated Serj once resided.

A "cakette" is no mere cake ball. How dare you. Coated in chocolate, cakettes are a marriage between a cake and a truffle, with as much of a chocolate presence as cake.

Cakettes TX is a spinoff of the original Cakettes, a coffee and cake-ball shop in western Massachusetts where owner Tessa Dagger first opened her shop in 2009.

In 2015, her husband received a promotion at work and was relocated to Dallas, so she sold the original shop to an employee, who gave Dagger her blessing to launch a shop in Dallas.

Dagger is back to making cakes for events such as weddings and birthdays, and will sell them at the new shop, along with espresso, coffee, tea, breakfast sandwiches, muffins, lunch sandwiches, and more.

The shop will serve as her new base of operations as well as a retail place where people can come in and buy a cakette or two along with their coffee. Other menu items include croissants, bagels, muffins, flatbread pizzas, chili, and that New England favorite, corn chowder.

"We'll be open 7 am-6 pm on weekdays, so we'll have breakfast sandwiches for sure," Dagger says. They'll also be open on Saturdays, but a little later in the morning, possibly 10 am.

The coffee menu will include all your basic espresso beverages plus some unique flavors such as the "mad German mocha," with chocolate and coconut syrups which she describes as "German chocolate cake in a cup."

Downtown Dallas is getting up to speed on coffee shops, with players such as Weekend Coffee at the Joule Dallas hotel, Ascension at 1601 Elm St., and the new Fiction Coffee outlet at 750 N. St. Paul St.

Serj, the eccentric coffee shop and bookstore whose space she took over, had developed a solid following but closed abruptly in June under strange circumstances when its owner was arrested — but the market for an independent coffee shop still exists.

"The owner of the property really wanted there to be a coffee shop in the space," Dagger says. "There's a lot going on at the location. It's right off the St. Paul DART rail station, so it has high visibility. Downtown Dallas knows its coffee and there's a lot of demand."